Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback James Cook University Law Review

Yau, Barry; Bloomfield, Glenda --- "The Road Taken: an Australian Longitudinal Study of Law Graduates and Lawyers Who Pursued Careers Outside of Law" [2024] JCULawRw 6; (2024) 30 James Cook University Law Review 87

The Road Taken: An Australian Longitudinal Study of Law Graduates and Lawyers Who Pursued Careers Outside of Law

Barry Yau^[1]* and Glenda Bloomfield^[1]**

Abstract

Never before have there been as many Australian law schools as there are today. This has led to a perception amongst lawyers and the media about the oversupply of law graduates, usually in the context of whether the legal profession can absorb the substantial number of law graduates. What is lacking in this discourse is the choices that law graduates make to pursue or continue their careers outside the legal profession. Our Australian qualitative longitudinal study, which researched a cohort of law graduates and lawyers for the period 2014 to 2021, reports on the motivations such law graduates have in sidestepping a legal career. Whilst these reasons cannot be generalised to all law graduates, the motivations throws into sharp relief the burdens that commercial and corporate lawyers face in practice. It is these experiences that are pertinent to law graduates, many of whom have been influenced by commercial and corporate career paths during their time in law school.

I Introduction

This article draws on the qualitative data obtained through interviews with law graduates and lawyers from our longitudinal study covering the period 2014 to 2021. In particular, this article focuses on the law graduates^[1] who pursued paths outside of law. With anecdotal evidence that an increasing number of law graduates are pursuing careers outside of law, we seek to contribute to the body of research by analysing their motivations and aspirations. We also aim to add to this body of research our data on the practising lawyers who decided to pivot to careers beyond the law.

In our study, most of the law graduates who chose not to pursue private legal practice^[2] were already career employees of the Australian Public Service^[3] whilst studying their LLB or JD. The central argument that will be developed is that a career public servant, having chosen to remain in the public service instead of pursuing legal practice, continues to experience high levels of satisfaction and contentedness with their career beyond the law. The reasons for continuing a public service career are grounded in factors such as being able to accomplish service to the public and maintain a suitable work-life balance. Other factors, which draw on negative perceptions of private practice such as the pressures of billings, actually reflect the challenges and concerns of some of the corporate lawyers who participated in our study. This commonality could elevate the relevance of such reasons to the broader legal community, including law students and law teachers who seek to appreciate the wider demands of being a private practice lawyer. Relatedly, a public servant’s commitment to the notion of public service was an ideal pursued by some of the corporate lawyers in our research that motivated them making significant career-altering choices.

II Literature Review

Our literature review identified reported longitudinal studies of law students and lawyers in the USA,^[4] Canada,^[5] and New Zealand.^[6] All were primarily quantitative studies and varied in the size of the cohorts and the period of time covered. One common factor amongst these longitudinal studies was their attention to the legal career journeys of law graduates and their experience in legal practice. The literature appears to give only secondary consideration, if at all, to the stories of law graduates who did not pursue legal practise. The corollary is that the literature and popular media contains an abundance of studies and accounts of the challenges law graduates generally face in entering the legal profession, sometimes within the context of the ‘oversupply’ of law graduates. Yet even then, much of the emphasis is on the lack of opportunities in the legal profession for law graduates, rather than a serious exploration of career paths pursued outside the legal profession.^[7]

Melville acknowledges that past research into the ‘oversupply of law graduates has focused almost exclusively on employment within the legal profession’, predicated on the assumption that law graduates ‘will be disappointed’ if they do not move into a legal career.^[8] Melville posits the concept of a law degree being a ‘generalist degree’ rather than legal career-specific, suggesting that effectively the law degree is becoming the ‘new arts degree’.^[9] She draws upon annual surveys conducted by the Graduate Destination Survey between 1999 and 2014, indicating the percentage of law graduates in Australia who enter ‘private legal practice’, ‘government positions’, and ‘industry/commercial positions’. The percentage of law graduates entering industry/commercial positions between 1999 and 2014 increased from 13.3% to 21.6%. The percentage of law graduates entering positions outside the categories of private and government positions is actually higher, as there is a small unreported percentage between 1999 and 2014 (ranging between 1% and 5%) outside the ‘industry/commercial positions’ category.^[10]

Also, it is unclear if the survey, in categorising ‘government positions’, lumped together law graduates practising as lawyers in government with law graduates working in government generally. If they were combined, then the percentage of law graduates in careers outside of law is actually higher than that reported by the Graduate Destination Survey. Also, this survey is silent about the motivations of law graduates who pursue a career outside of law, and more fundamentally what drove such law graduates to undertake a law degree in the first place. There appears to be no other public source of data indicating the percentage of law graduates who become legal practitioners (and conversely the number of law graduates who do not enter legal practice).^[11]

III Methods

A Narrative Inquiry

The literature review revealed some longitudinal studies that reported its data through the lens of narrative inquiry.^[12] Whilst it is not our intention to provide a comprehensive account of narrative inquiry, it is worth noting that, similar to longitudinal research, narrative inquiry seeks to understand the experiences from our research participants’ stories through an intimate study of an individual’s experience over time and in contexts.^[13] Connolly and Clandinin first used the term narrative inquiry in the context of educational research in the early 1990s.^[14] Narrative inquiry attempts to understand how people think through events, what they value, and how they make sense of the world.^[15] Narrative inquiry considers the storyteller’s position, characters, the endpoints, and sequencing and tension created by the events through a metaphorical three-dimensional narrative inquiry space with the elements of past, present and future (time), personal and social (people), and places (situation).^[16]

We are influenced to utilise some or all of the three elements of the narrative inquiry space to observe how the lives of our participants, particularly the law graduates who have chosen careers outside of law, unfold through transitions and turning points through the flow of past, present and future.^[17] Some elements will be more pertinent than others in examining such transitions and turning points. We draw upon Neale’s definition of ‘transition’ as a ‘dynamic period of a life course that constitute a passage from one concrete status or circumstance to another.’^[18]

Hareven and Masaoka refer to examples of major transitions in work and family lives which are considered normative: leaving home, starting a career, getting married.^[19] It is reasonable to say that traditionally the transition from law graduate to practising lawyer is normative, although our article will consider whether within certain contexts transitions go against the norm, or start to become a new norm. A normative transition can be concurrently seen as a ‘turning point’ that captures ‘critical events, defining moments or interactions that can act as triggers of change.’^[20]

B Participants

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the Australian National University (ANU) approved waves one and two on 24 December 2013 and 13 January 2021, respectively.

1 Wave One, 2014–2015

We recruited respondents in wave one from three cohorts: LLB and JD students at ANU^[21], PLT students at ANU,^[22] and early career commercial lawyers practising in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).^[23]

Wave one was originally a one-off study researching the attitudes law students and early career commercial lawyers have towards commercial law, and the role of legal ethics in the study and practise of this area. We collected data through semi-structured interviews^[24] and focus groups.^[25] The principal investigator moderated the focus groups in person.^[26] The researchers conducted the interviews in person or by Skype.^[27] The principal investigator transcribed the focus group and interview recordings. The researchers analysed the data by reading several times the transcripts to identify and code themes, terminology and patters. The transcripts were cut and sorted for categorisation into themes and sub-themes. We published our wave one findings regarding the impact of notions of success on career aspirations and work-life balance.^[28] The principal investigator remained in contact with the respondents by sending them these publications.^[29]

2 Conversion to Longitudinal Study: Wave Two, 2021

The principal investigator decided in 2020 to convert the one-off study into a qualitative longitudinal project. One motivator was filling the literature void by researching a law graduate’s transition to legal practice or other professions, and the trajectory of early career lawyers. A longitudinal study would help us better understand how their lives progressed since wave one,^[30] and how their future could unfold in the context of life, family and career.

In 2021 the principal investigator emailed the 48 wave one respondents inviting them to participate in the second wave. Respondents were given an opportunity, through a semi-structured interview conducted by the principal investigator, to reflect back and look forward on the factors, forces and choices shaping life, family and career.^[31] Seventy-seven per cent volunteered to return.^[32] Whilst some researchers consider an 80% return rate as adequate, 70% is acceptable as the time and expense required to go above this figure would exceed the contribution of the additional cases to the overall validity.^[33] The interviews, conducted and recorded through Zoom or telephone,^[34] included questions built upon each respondent’s wave one data.

After transcribing the interviews, the principal investigator cut and sorted both waves of the transcripts of each respondent into a roughly chronological narrative for thematical analysis. We sent each respondent their chronological narrative to check for accuracy.^[35]

(a) Sub-cohort of Law Graduates Who Did Not Pursue Legal Practice

Of the returning cohort of 15 LLB/JD students to wave two, 12 became legal practitioners. Two of the cohort (one of whom was in the public service whilst studying the LLB) declined to enter legal practice after completing their LLB. The final participant (who was a longstanding public servant), at the time of the second wave interview, was attempting to enter legal practice.

Of the cohort of the 12 PLT students who returned for the second wave, seven entered legal practice (one of whom was a career public servant who transitioned to private legal practice and ultimately became a sole practitioner). Three common factors of the five PLT students who chose not to enter legal practice was that all are female, all were career public servants, and there was an intervening period between the completion of their LLB and the commencement of their PLT. Of these five, three already had work experience in legal environments prior to studying their PLT.

(b) Sub-cohort of Lawyers Who Departed Legal Practice

Of the returning cohort of 10 early career commercial lawyers, eight continued in legal practice. Of the other two, one lawyer, who had extensive experience in corporate law firms, transitioned to senior legal policy roles across the public service, before moving overseas where she pursued post-graduate study. The other lawyer had moved from a legal policy role to senior management positions in a government agency.^[36] As mentioned earlier, 12 participants from the returning cohort of 15 LLB/JD students became legal practitioners. Of these 12, three departed legal practice after several years: one entered the public service, one returned to his home country and entered the public service there, and one enrolled in medical studies.

IV Limitations

One limitation of our research is a lack of, for example, private sector-based participants who chose not to enter private practice or legal practice generally. Without in any way discounting the experiences of the public service participants, such participants in the private sector could have provided a broader perspective of the motivations of law graduates who sidestep legal practice. Related to this limitation is that our study does not include people who worked in less secure employment whilst studying law.

Further limitations are that none of these participants were based in regional or rural areas of Australia, and none had attended regional or ‘non-sandstone’ universities. Perhaps a larger and diverse sample of participants across Australia could have provided more in-depth explanations of decisions to pursue careers beyond the law. We acknowledge the small size and composition of our sample does not necessarily reflect the reasons, perspectives or experiences of law graduates who choose not to enter legal practice more generally.

Only 10 of the original 17 early career commercial lawyers who participated in the first wave returned for the second wave. The return of more of that cohort’s participants could have provided further insights into career changes in or out of law between the two waves, and how they compare with the decisions of the law graduates who chose not to practise law.

V Themes and Findings

Selected quotes from both waves illuminate the themes and define patterns.

A Decision Not to Enter Private Practice

Three themes arose from our public service participants regarding their concerns about private practice. These themes stem from the participants’ perspectives with respect to one or more elements of narrative inquiry: place (the public service, private practice), time (length of service in the public service) and people (family, work colleagues). These themes also reflect the challenges, concerns and ambitions raised by some of the participants who were corporate lawyers.

1 Billables

PLT-1,^[37] who advanced in the public service between the first and second waves, expressed in her second wave interview the gratefulness for the success achieved as a public servant. PLT-1 explained one of the dominant reasons for declining to enter private practice following being eligible to practise:

... the uncertainty that surrounds your ability and how your job defines your life because the more billables you do, the more likely you’ve got to keep your job at the end of the day.

PLT-1 drew upon the importance of the public service in preserving the boundary between work and family life:

I think the public service is good for making sure that’s a good distinction without blending, blurring the boundaries too much.

LLB-1, who completed her LLB whilst progressing in the public service, explained in her second wave interview her perception of billable hours:

It seemed incredibly stressful ... and I know that’s not every job, but obviously the public service ... is relatively chill compared with what I imagine like working to billable hours would be.^[38]

PLT-4, who had a lengthy public service career, had a stint in a global law firm as part of her work experience requirements for her PLT. PLT-4 observed in the firm the ‘pyramid system’ where the senior lawyers were:

... standing on the shoulders of all people under them that were bringing in all the money and the work and doing all the long hours ... and [the senior lawyers] were so horrible to them ... the way they treated their own staff meant I wouldn’t have touched them with a barge pole.

The sentiments of these participants about billing practises reflects a universal concern in the legal profession that has been the subject of numerous articles in the literature in Australia and globally.^[39] Whilst not all law graduates are deterred by the challenge of achieving billable hours, even some of the more experienced and seasoned corporate lawyers in our research confirmed the enormous pressures in fulfilling billable hour targets. ECL-1 explained in his first wave interview that whilst he had very much enjoyed working in a global law firm, a ‘very stressful’ aspect was the ‘absolute pressure to have billable targets met every day.’ He further explained the consequences of lawyers who cannot achieve their billable targets, even if through no fault of their own:

People who can’t do it are very swiftly disposed of. They’re gone. A lot of grads have not made it, they basically, cut loose. Their food line gets cut off so, once a partner does not like you, you’re not working up to standard or something, they just stop giving you work. Then you don’t have any billables, then you get performance managed, then you’re basically encouraged to leave. I’ve seen that [happen] to graduates.

Another early career lawyer, ECL-2, who had garnered much experience in top-tier practice, was very open in her wave one interview about encountering the ‘quite stressful’ situation of falling short of her billable targets in a top-tier firm:

So it started to become quite stressful because they have seven billable hours a day there, which is quite a lot ... I was literally like pulling teeth to try and get one, maybe two billable hours a day ... I was asking everybody for work and I wasn’t getting anything, and that’s when it started to become a stressful issue for me because I knew that it was going to work against me when it came time for my performance review ... they would say you haven’t hit your billables, and it isn’t going to matter in the slightest how much I say, ‘well you didn’t give me any work.’

Through narrative inquiry, we see that the pressures of billing is dominant in the timeline of legal practice, thus being an influential factor for some law graduates in deciding whether to enter practice, and a pressure point for lawyers themselves. The element of personal and social can be critical for law graduates, e.g. not allowing the pressure of billings to define one’s life.

The element of place comes into play where law graduates prefer the work environment of the public service for example, compared to the very stressful demands of private practice billables. The concept of place was evident with ECL-2’s experiences with billing. ECL-2 recalled in her first wave interview that her expectations of a lawyer were shaped by her law school, which never showed her ‘anything other than a commercial lawyer as an option.’ She strongly expressed her view that law schools should provide more information to students about a broader range of careers beyond top tier practice. Based on some of her unsettling experiences in top tier practice, she was open to exploring options in government where there might be a ‘slightly better environment.’

2 Mundanity of private practice

Not all law graduates, especially if they are already established career professionals, are willing to transition to entry-level lawyer status if it involves performing tasks which would usually be undertaken by junior administrative staff.

PLT-2, who studied her PLT between waves one and two whilst being a career public servant, had prior experience in the legal field following the completion of her LLB several years earlier. PLT-2 became a magistrate’s associate soon after completing her LLB, followed by a career in the public service (including in one department covering law and justice) focusing in major policy areas. PLT-2’s enrolment in the PLT was to ‘finish the journey’ for eligibility to practise. PLT-2 explained her reasons for turning down an offer from a large law firm:

I found that because given my experience that I wouldn’t be, just a starter, fresh from uni. But the biggest concern I had was when I asked about what were some of the jobs I would be doing ... It was very much more, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but a lot of administrative component. I asked about proportions of time of what I would be doing in a typical day, ‘oh you do a lot of photocopying, you do a lot of admin circulars and stuff like that to the partners. You’ll be assisting this person putting documents together.’ I appreciate that’s part and parcel of a task, but I found that’s not commensurate of what is being taught at law school.

When I was in the public service that’s what I would actually have very junior staff do ... and I’m thinking why would you want [a lawyer] to do that when you can employ someone to do that without the title of a lawyer ... Then they said ‘we’re charging out $425 an hour.’

Ultimately PLT-2 declined the position and instead enrolled in a PhD researching the diversity of the Australian judiciary.

Through narrative inquiry, a person’s experiences can sometimes be contextualised through time such as within a longer-term historical narrative.^[40] PLT-2 expressed concerns about the disconnect between her law studies in addition to her previous experience in the legal environment, and what was expected of her as a lawyer. This reflects a trend that Susskind has identified, where young lawyers are ‘asked to undertake routine legal work largely as a way of them learning their trade’.^[41] In doing so, clients are charged for ‘fairly high hourly rates for the work’ of young lawyers, despite them ‘learning on the job’ performing duties that is ‘administrative or process-based’ and perceived as ‘routine and repetitive.’^[42]

ECL-1’s account of his early experience with a global law firm appears to be aligned with the trend amongst young lawyers. ECL-1 detailed in his 2014 first wave interview the prosaic nature of some of his work that ultimately made him a better lawyer:

... mundane yes definitely. The amount of paperwork and printing and things that photocopying. The amount of checking ... and that’s I guess what you pay a law firm to do, is to check things. But yes, a huge contract can be beautifully written but then of course you need to think of the cross references, the glossary terms and all these things and they take forever, those things I find incredibly mundane and dull. But they’re a huge part of the work I do and I can, and they’ve also made me, I would hate to say it, they have made me a better lawyer.

ECL-1’s conclusion that his expertise grew through the mundane tasks is consistent with Susskind’s observation that lawyers become experts by ‘spending months on what is largely administrative work.’^[43]

The operative term in Susskind’s observations is ‘young lawyer’. In Australia a young law graduate entering a competitive legal market, often saddled with substantial loans that supported their law studies, may be more willing to embrace the initial mundanity to progress in the legal profession, especially if they are not raising a family. However, someone like PLT-2, who had a successful career in the public service, may understandably demur. Through the lens of narrative inquiry, we see PLT-2 would have had to factor in her immediate family commitments and perhaps even professional self-esteem as she had been a senior public servant with experience in Australia and abroad (the elements of personal and social, and place).

3 Contributing to Society

One reason for some of the participants choosing to remain in the public service was because they were better positioned there than in private practice to contribute to society as a whole. In the context of narrative inquiry, this involves a participant working from the space of the public service to have a meaningful impact in the community space. PLT-3, who had been in the public service for over a decade at the time of her second wave interview, explained that a huge driver for her was ‘working for the public interest’ which started when, during her LLB, she undertook internships with community legal centres. Her career has been ‘shaped by opportunities to give back to the public’ in the broader sense of public service:

You can do a job and you can earn a salary and that’s all good and well but I had the privilege of education and I wanted to make it count. I really liked working in government departments because I feel a tangible link between the effort that I put in everyday and the community that we’re there to look after and support. That’s a huge driver for me ... by the time I finished my undergraduate degree and definitely when I was doing my practical legal training I wanted to be using the law to create tangible outcomes to people and to be hopefully leaving society slightly better off because of the effort that I put in. That’s been a huge driver for me ...

PLT-3’s career path could have gone into private practice if she had followed her assumption as a law student that the goal of being a lawyer was to be a partner. However, her work experience in corporate firms representing insurance companies steered her away from private practice:

It felt like my whole job was trying not to pay out money, trying to find exceptions or loopholes or staying on top of legal precedents that were going to be working in the favour of very big corporations. It made me feel icky to be honest. I think from about my third year at law school ... I thought about in-house but it looked to me like in-house lawyers were just lawyers who used to work in private sector firms and then they decided to go in-house ... By the time I was in my last year I was pretty set on working for government or working for a big NGO or an organisation that had some community values driving it.

PLT-1 stated in her second wave interview her reasons for remaining in the public service:

I sort of like that sort of underdog social policy, working with vulnerable Australians that other people would kind of turn their noses up at.

PLT-4, who had lengthy public service career, explained in her second wave interview the importance of serving the public interest:

So definitely I look for a career and employers where I can add value and I can do something that is going to make a difference. So that’s why I like the Public Service career. I want to be doing something that matters. I like the Public Service because at the heart of government you can actually play with big levers that make a difference to peoples’ everyday lives.

The pursuit of being in a position to help people was also embodied in the response of ECL-3, who worked in legal, regulatory and policy roles in the public service between waves one and two. ECL-3 had, prior to joining the public service, worked as a lawyer in private practice:

[The private practice] work wasn’t too bad ... I could see, obviously it’s a business, it’s a money-making business that involves people’s legal affairs. It was really I guess the pursuit of helping others, it wasn’t so much about helping, it was about helping your clients but it wasn’t about helping the public. Maybe that sense, when I was working there I wasn’t getting the feeling I feel rewarded, like I’m doing something with my life, with my work. I do feel that I do resonate with the public service.

The notion of helping the public was also shared by several of the participants who were corporate lawyers. LLB-3, soon after admission, secured a position at a commercial legal practice in a major Australian capital city. Whilst he enjoyed being a corporate lawyer and being rewarded with a generous salary, he explained in his second wave interview:

For me the things that are more important than just money, and sometimes you’ve got to do things that are worthwhile and that actually contribute towards making the community a better place. So I feel that if the usual large firms are basically making the rich richer, helping the people pay less tax even though they are already earning a lot of money.

LLB-3 was motivated to ‘help the people in need’, building on his first wave interview where he stated he was not in the law ‘for the money’, but was interested in how lawyers can ‘contribute to society as a whole.’ This led to a major turning point in his career trajectory, with his transition to a community legal centre in a regional area where he had a work-life balance that came with:

helping the people in the community, poor people, the underprivileged ... helping those that really cannot afford these legal services who have the potential to go to jail, because they don’t understand the legal system.

The notion of community service led LLB-4 to make a drastic career change beyond his top tier law firm position. As he explained in his second wave interview:

Then as time went on and as I began to work as a [top tier] lawyer I thought well actually I’m starting to value perhaps having a legacy that’s perhaps more fulfilling rather than just making the ASX listed companies richer, I can look back on having helped people more directly.

He reasoned that medicine was a good way to achieve this, coupled with the job and financial security (in his first wave interview he expressed his ambition to study medicine, but his attention turned to law studies). By the time of his second wave interview he was on the verge of completing his medical degree and commencing his journey in medicine.

ECL-2, who was dissatisfied with the pressure to achieve billing targets in corporate practice, transitioned to legal regulatory and compliance positions in the public service which she found to be a ‘great environment’. ECL-2’s second wave interview provided an affecting narrative of the driving factor in her life:

I was always seeing some more meaningful purpose, some sort of role that transcended money and things. That’s why I went to law school. I went to law school because I wanted to work with the Red Cross as a humanitarian lawyer or something like that. That’s why I went to law school. So, I was always seeking a way to help people, to do something different, to make a difference and so I never wanted to be like those lawyers that just were there to bill and that was six minutes, okay bye.

B Challenge of Maintaining Seniority and Remuneration Conditions in Private Practice

Sometimes the higher one goes up the public service armed with legal qualifications, the more of a step down it is to become lawyers whether in private practice or government. Two of the participants, who held senior public service positions, found themselves in this position. PLT-1 explained in her second wave interview:

... obviously I don’t have that skill set anymore, I can’t just go into corporate law right now and be on the same money, the same level as management that I am now. So, it’s kind of I think my ship has sailed unless I want to go back and be an intern again or something, which I don’t think I could do with a mortgage.

PLT-5, who had extensive experience in regulatory policy, observed in her second wave interview the drop in conditions she would face in transferring to a government in-house role:

If I was to get a legal officer position then they would expect me to have had a lot more practical legal experience, which I don’t have ... I’m not willing to take a pay cut now, so I won’t be able to get a legal officer at my level.

However, one participant, PLT-6, did enter legal practice after accumulating nearly 30 years in the public service and related activities. PLT-6 was keen to become a lawyer in private practice despite a dramatic drop in remuneration. After gaining entry-level experience in a small firm where the newly admitted lawyer enjoyed the work but was supervised by an unfriendly supervisor, the participant was motivated to set up a sole practice with more professional freedom and autonomy. Of all the Australian-based participants in our research, PLT-6 was the only one to set up or work as a sole practitioner between the first and second waves. In comparison to the Australia-wide statistics as at October 2020, 82% of private practices were ‘sole practices or law practices with one principal.’^[44] Another participant from the research, LLB-6, who studied his law degree in Australia as an international student, set up a part-time sole practice in his home country, which he works on around his full-time government agency duties.

C The Benefits of a Law Degree Without Practising Law

The comments of some of the law graduates who did not pursue legal practice reflect Thornton and Shannon’s observation that certain law schools can promise prestige through their law degree, with the degree providing a ‘bridge to coveted and prestigious careers’.^[45] PLT-3 highlighted the benefits of her legal qualification as a career public servant:

So, I think my legal training has really helped me to look at a problem and break it down into small parts and try and predict what might go wrong.

PLT-4, who also completed her law studies while continuing being a public servant, observed:

I haven’t practised as a lawyer in that narrow sense ... people have thought it was useful to have somebody with legal qualifications on their team. I certainly have forgotten a lot of what I learned through my degrees ... but certainly having the ability to go and research things and find the answers and work out where you would go for the information, that’s been really useful.

LLB-2 placed a premium on her law degree in pursuing a career in public advocacy:

I knew that people would trust me because I spent five years studying law ... I think that’s where the value of studying law lies is that you can have, status and power to make money, or status and power to be involved in like politics, it’s a very unique type of status that you get in society compared to something like medicine where you have status and respect but it’s in a very narrow field ... I never had to work as a lawyer to be able to get the benefit of having a law degree.

VI Conclusion

Despite some significant limitations outlined earlier in this article, the study still presents a range of perceptions and factors that can influence law graduates to steer away from legal practice, particularly private practice. Importantly, most of our participants who continued their career in the public service were not dismayed about a potential legal career passing them by. Any disenchantment participants may have experienced about not having a stint as a legal practitioner was diminished by their firm commitment to the notion of public service and their concerns about the nature of private practice and its impact on family and social life. This finding partly goes against the assumption identified by Melville that law graduates ‘will be disappointed’ if they don’t transition to a legal career.^[46]

As our participants were career public servants located in Canberra, we acknowledge that their choice to continue in the public service may not be an experience relatable to law graduates working in different sectors and industries around Australia contemplating breaking into the legal profession. A further study about this would be welcome, especially for law graduates living in regional or rural areas or working in professions that some may perceive as being far removed from legal practice. Nevertheless, the finding that the public servants’ concerns about private practice are shared by seasoned corporate lawyers themselves lends further credibility to their choice to affirm their own paths beyond the law. Whilst it is unclear whether our findings point to a growing normality of a law degree being a valuable career tool for careers outside the legal profession, our findings show a high level of career satisfaction for a category of participants who have affirmed their choice to continue their public service career.

^* Associate Lecturer in Law, College of Business, Law and Governance, James Cook University and an honorary law academic at the Australian National University.

^** Academic Researcher and Lawyer. Glenda was formerly a lecturer in the practical legal training program and undergraduate law at the Australian National University and has extensive experience in legal practice in the government and private sectors.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgement: The authors are very grateful for the work of David Catanzariti and Alexandra Johnstone, who were co-investigators in the first wave of the research.

^[1] In Australia a ‘law graduate’ is usually synonymous with a person who has completed their law degree, i.e. LLB or JD. However, before a law graduate can practice law, they need to then complete their practical legal training course. Once a law graduate has completed their practical legal training and met other formal requirements, they are eligible to be admitted in as an ‘Australian lawyer’. An Australian lawyer who chooses to enter practice can then become an ‘Australian legal practitioner’ by virtue of holding a practicing certificate: each state and territory in Australia has uniform legislation that more or less uses this terminology, e.g. Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) ss 5-6. Therefore, it is not uncommon for someone to have the title of Australian lawyer but not be in legal practice and thus not be an Australian legal practitioner.

^[2] As at 2022 (the year after the data was collected for wave two), two-thirds of solicitors in Australia were working in private practice: Urbis, 2022 National Profile of Solicitors: Final Report (2022) 24.

^[3] In this article the shorthand reference to the Australian Public Service and its employees is ‘the public service’ and ‘public servants’, respectively, unless the contrary is indicated.

^[4] John Monahan and Jeffrey Swanson, 'Lawyers at the Peak of their careers: A 30-Year Longitudinal Study of Job and Life Satisfaction' (2019) 16(1) (March) Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4; Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth and Joyce S. Sterling, ‘Buyer's Remorse? An Empirical Assessment of the Desirability of a Lawyer Career’ (2013) 63(2) (November) Journal of Legal Education 211; Ronit Dinovitzer and Bryant Garth, ‘The new place of corporate law firms in the structuring of elite legal careers’ (2020) 45(2) Law & Social Inquiry 339; John Bliss, ‘Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students and New Lawyers in a Period of Market Crisis’ (2017) 42(3) (Summer) Law & Social Inquiry 855.

^[5] Fiona M Kay and John Hagan, ‘Building Trust: Social Capital, Distributive Justice, and Loyalty to the Firm’ (2003) 28(2) (Spring) Law & Social Inquiry 483; Fiona M Kay and Jean E Wallace, ‘Mentors as social capital: Gender, mentors, and career rewards in law practice’ (2009) 79(3) Sociological inquiry 418.

^[6] Lynne Taylor et al, ‘The making of Aoteoroa | New Zealand lawyers: a longitudinal study of law students and law graduates’ (2023) 57(3) The Law Teacher 309.

^[7] In Australia see: Christine Parker, ‘An Oversupply of Law Graduates – Putting the Statistics in Context’ (1993) 4 Legal Education Review 255; Peter Young, ‘Are law schools producing too many lawyers’ (2014) 88(6); Australian Law Journal 367; Angela Melville, ‘It is the worst time in living history to be a law graduate: or is it? Does Australia have too many law graduates?’ (2017) 51(2) The Law Teacher 203; Emma Musgrave, 'Frustration grows over unis ‘cashing in’ on law grad oversupply' Lawyers Weekly (online at 20 February 2019) <https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/sme-law/22768-frustration-grows-over-unis-cashing-in-on-law-grad-oversupply>..

^[8] Melville (n 7) 220

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Graduate Destination Survey, Gradstats Reports 1999–2014 <http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/research/researchreports/gradstats> , cited in Melville (n 7) 220.

^[11] Council of Law Deans, Data Regarding Law School Graduate Numbers and Outcomes <https://cald.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Factsheet-Law_Students_in_Australia.pdf>.

^[12] For example: the experiences of students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds studying at a regional Australian university: Suzanne Macqueen and Carmel Patterson, ‘Reflexivity in a longitudinal narrative inquiry: in pursuit of clarity of interpretations’ (2021) 44(2) International Journal of Research & Method in Education 125-134; the decision-making of British further education students: Z. Baker (2020) ‘The vocational/academic divide in widening participation: the higher education decision making of further education students’ (2020) 44(6) Journal of Further and Higher Education 766-780.

^[13] Vera Caine, Andrew Estafan and D. Jean Clandinin, ‘A Return to Methodological Commitment: Reflections on Narrative Inquiry’ (2013) 57(6) Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 574, 576-577.

^[14] Michael F Connelly and D Jean Clandinin, ‘Stories of experience and narrative inquiry’ (1990) 19(5) Educational researcher 2; D Jean Clandinin, Debbie Pushor and Anne Murray Orr, ‘Navigating sites for narrative inquiry’ (2007) 58(1) Journal of teacher education 21, 22.

^[15] Therese Riley and Penelope Hawe, ‘Researching practice: the methodological case for narrative inquiry’ (2005) 20(2) Health education research 226, 229.

^[16] Ibid 226; D Jean Clandinin, ‘Narrative inquiry: A methodology for studying lived experience’ (2006) 27(1) Research studies in music education 44, 47.

^[17] Claire Bidart, ‘What does time imply?’ (2013) 22(2) Time & Society 254, 257; Bren Neale, What is Qualitative Longitudinal Research? (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) 4-6.

^[18] Neale (n 17) 42.

^[19] Tamara K Hareven and Kanji Masaoka, ‘Turning points and transitions: Perceptions of the life course’ (1988) 13(1) Journal of family history 271, 272.

^[20] Neale (n 17) 39.

^[21] LLB or JD students were eligible to participate in wave one if they had already studied Corporations Law and Legal Ethics. One of the LLB respondents was a student at the University of Canberra, who we included as the student had studied those two subjects. We recruited students from the Australian National University because the researchers were law academics there.

^[22] LLB or JD graduates seeking to apply for admission in Australia are required to complete their PLT.

^[23] We recruited lawyers (most with up to five years post-admission experience) from firms located in the ACT because the Australian National University is located in the ACT.

^[24] Semi-structured interviews were held for respondents not participating in a focus group. We conducted the interviews because of the recruitment and logistical challenges in bringing together the adequate number of respondents for a focus group.

^[25] Two focus groups comprised LLB or JD respondents, two comprised PLT respondents, and two comprised the lawyer respondents, with each focus group composed of between four and six respondents.

^[26] The principal investigator is the first author. Focus groups ran between 90 minutes and two hours.

^[27] The conduct of the interviews was divided between the Principal Investigator and the then co-investigator, Alexandra Johnstone. Semi-structured interviews ran for about one hour.

^[28] Barry Yau and David Catanzariti. ‘Bridging the Information Gap’ (2018) Law Institute Journal 40; Barry Yau, David Catanzariti and Joanne Atkinson, ‘The Information Gap: A comparative study of the paradigms shaping perceptions of career success for law undergraduates and professional legal training students in Australia and the latent implications of non-professional legal career opportunities for law graduates in England’ in Rachel Field and Caroline Strevens (eds) Educating for Well-Being in Law (Routledge, 2019) 74; Barry Yau, ‘Reshaping the teaching–research nexus: connecting with students through research blogging (with an autoethnographic perspective) before they become lawyers’ (2020) 54(2) The Law Teacher 261; Barry Yau and David Catanzariti, ‘At play in the field of dreams: Theorising attitudes, perceptions and practices of law students in conjunction with the reflections of early career commercial lawyers’ (2020) 37(1) Law Context: A Socio-Legal Journal 114.

^[29] One or two of the respondents suggested to the principal investigator that follow-up research be done.

^[30] Neale (n 17) 10; Lars R. Bergman, ‘Some methodological issues in longitudinal research: looking ahead’ in David Magnusson and Paul Casaer (eds) Longitudinal Research on Individual Development: Present Status and Future Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 1993) 217.

^[31] Organising focus groups for wave two was impractical as some of the respondents were possibly dispersed across Australia and the world. Even if enough respondents were willing to travel to a mutual location for a focus group, the COVID-19 lockdowns made this virtually impossible.

^[32] The retention rate for the LLB/JD and PLT cohorts was very high (94% and 80% respectively), compared to the low retention rate of the early career commercial lawyers (59%). One LLB participant, two PLT participants, and five early career commercial lawyers from wave one did not respond to the research team’s repeated email invitations to participate in wave two. Originally 15 LLB/JD students from wave one participated in wave two, but after one of them withdrew their participation for personal reasons after their wave two interview was completed, the researchers decided to exclude the respondent’s data. Another PLT respondent from wave one declined to participate in wave two without disclosing a reason. Another two early career commercial lawyers from wave one declined to participate in wave two due to family or personal reasons.

^[33] Robert B Cotter et al, ‘Contacting participants for follow-up: how much effort is required to retain participants in longitudinal studies?’ (2005) 28(1) Evaluation and Program Planning 15, 16

^[34] A small number of respondents were interviewed by telephone due to technical difficulties with Zoom. The principal investigator also accepted the request of one of the respondents not to record their interview.

^[35] Seven respondents provided updates or edits. Several respondents commented on their chronological narrative, with one writing that ‘it was very special to read’.

^[36] References in this article to ‘public service’ or ‘government agency’ careers denote public service positions that are not lawyer positions, unless stated to the contrary, e.g. government in-house lawyer.

^[37] Code identifiers have been used as ‘pseudonyms’ for the participants. Code identifiers that start with LLB denotes that the participant was originally part of the LLB/JD cohort in 2014/15, code identifiers starting with PLT denotes that the participant was originally part of the PLT cohort in 2014/15, and code identifiers starting with ECL denotes that the participant was originally part of the early career commercial lawyer cohort in 2014/15.

^[38] It may be a surprise to some lawyers that billable hours is not just confined to private practice firms. The principal investigator, prior to becoming an academic, worked for an Australian government law agency that set ‘billing targets’ for its legal practitioners in relation to their work for government clients.

^[39] In Australia: Adele J. Bergin and Nerina L. Jimmieson, ‘Australian lawyer well-being: Workplace demands, resources and the impact of time-billing targets’ (2014) 21(3) Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 427; Margaret Thornton, ‘Squeezing the life out of lawyers: legal practice in the market embrace’ (2016) 25(4) Griffith Law Review 471; Colin James, ‘Legal practice on time: The ethical risk and inefficiency of the six-minute unit’ (2017) 42(1) Alternative Law Journal 61. In the USA: Susan Saab Fortney, ‘The billable hours derby: empirical data on the problems and pressure points’ (2005) 33 Fordham Urban Law Journal 171; Christine Parker and David Ruschena, ‘The pressures of billable hours: Lessons from a survey of billing practices inside law firms’ (2011) 9 University of St. Thomas Law Journal 619. In Canada: Alice Woolley, ‘Evaluating value: a historical case study of the capacity of alternative billing methods to reform unethical hourly billing’ (2005) 12(3) International Journal of the Legal Profession 339. In the UK: Hilary Sommerlad, ‘“A pit to put women in”: professionalism, work intensification, sexualisation and work–life balance in the legal profession in England and Wales’ (2016) 23(1) International Journal of the Legal Profession 61.

^[40] D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (Jossey-Bass, 2000) 19.

^[41] Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to your future (Oxford University Press, 2023) 215.

^[42] Ibid 39, 231.

^[43] Ibid 232.

^[44] In October 2022 there were 16,393 private law practices in Australia, with 82% being sole practices or law practices with one principal: Urbis, National Profile of Solicitors 2020 3.

^[45] Margaret Thornton and Lucinda Shannon, ‘Selling the dream’: law school branding and the illusion of choice’ [2013] LegEdRev 12; (2013) 23(2) Legal Education Review 249, 251-265.

^[46] Melville (n 7) 220.